Chapter Fifteen

March 1862

A gust of wind rattled the shutters outside my bedroom window one cold morning in March, then whistled down the chimney. But it was the words that Tessie had just read from the book of Philippians that made me pause in my knitting to look up at her, not the blustery wind. “Wait . . . read that again, Tessie.”

“ ‘Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus,’ ” she read. “ ‘Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant. . . .’ ”

“A servant,” I repeated. “That’s what Eli was trying to tell me last summer when we nursed all those wounded soldiers. God wants us to be His servants.”

Tessie shook her head as if she couldn’t believe the words either. “Eli always telling us colored folk that Massa Jesus understand us, that He a servant, too. But I ain’t believing it until I read this.”

“You and the others have an advantage over me in this area,” I said, returning to my knitting. “You already know how to be good servants, how to obey your master. No wonder Eli understands Jesus so much better than I do.”

Tessie turned back to the Bible and read, “ ‘He humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. . . .’ ” I stopped her again so I could ponder that thought. Would I be willing to obey God, even in the face of death?

My thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the sound of footsteps pounding up the stairs and Gilbert shouting, “Missy Caroline! Missy Caroline! Come quick! Come see who’s here!”

When I opened my bedroom door, I couldn’t believe the look of joy on Gilbert’s face. “Come see!” he repeated, and he bounded down the stairs again, ahead of me. When I reached the landing, I saw the front door flung wide open and my father standing in the foyer with his satchel at his feet. I ran downstairs to embrace him.

“Daddy! I can’t believe you’re finally home!”

“I can hardly believe it myself, Sugar. I had quite a time getting here, let me tell you.”

“Thank God you’re safe.”

When Daddy finally released me, Gilbert was still grinning. As he took Daddy’s hat and overcoat from him, the other servants began gathering shyly in the foyer to have a look at Daddy, as if they’d forgotten what he looked like.

“Welcome home, Massa Fletcher,” Tessie said softly, and Daddy smiled.

“Here you are home again,” Esther moaned, “and ain’t a bite of meat to eat in this whole house. I’m sorry, Massa Fletcher, but we ain’t had nothing but fish for days and days. Beef you buy in the market cost a fortune, and even then it’s about as tender as Eli’s old shoe.”

Daddy chuckled. “Fish will be just fine, Esther. In fact, Eli’s shoes would probably taste fine, too, if you cooked them. Ah, it’s good to be home!”

The servants went all out for Daddy, setting the dining room table for lunch, even though it was just the two of us, and uncorking a bottle of wine from the cellar. “Ain’t too many bottles left,” Gilbert explained, “since all them wounded soldiers Missy took in needed it so bad. But this here is a celebration.”

Esther set a bowl of potatoes in front of Daddy. “We eating a lot of potatoes, these days. Ain’t no butter to put on them neither, so I had to fix them with vinegar and bacon.”

“They smell wonderful,” he said.

“Don’t your daddy look good?” Tessie whispered as she set the platter of fish in front of me. “Don’t he, though? All that ocean sailing and salty air must agree with him.”

Eli came to stand in the dining room doorway, hat in hand, to welcome Daddy home and to explain to him why his stables housed only one little mare. “You made a good choice,” Daddy told him. “I would have done the same thing if I had been home.”

When we all finished telling Daddy our stories and explaining what had gone on in his absence, he leaned back in his chair and said, “You’ve had quite a time of it here while I was gone, haven’t you? But you’ve all done very well. My thanks to you.”

“I’m so glad you’re home,” I said. “Now you can make the hard decisions from now on.”

He reached for my hand, frowning. “Caroline, I can’t stay. I’m leaving again in a few days.” I stared at him, unable to speak. “I came back to apply for a government commission as a privateer.”

“Daddy! That’s the same thing as being a pirate.”

He laughed. “I suppose Mr. Lincoln and his friends might see it that way, but I consider myself part of the Confederate Navy. Our privateers have already made a big impact on the war effort, raiding Northern ships. And, of course, any goods my ships manage to seize will help the South, too.”

What my father planned was much worse than running the blockade. Attacking Union merchant ships on the high seas was considered piracy, and captured privateers faced execution. “Please don’t do this,” I begged. “It’s too dangerous. If you’re caught they’ll kill you.”

“Then I guess I’d better not get caught.” He smiled, trying to make light of it, but when he saw my expression he sobered. “Caroline, don’t make me feel any worse than I already do for leaving you. I would gladly heed your wishes if this were peacetime. But we’re at war, and every man—every woman, for that matter—has to do what he feels called upon to do. For Charles and Jonathan, that meant going off to fight. For me . . . this is something I really feel I have to do.”

I nodded and pretended to understand. Charles, Jonathan, and now Daddy were all willing to risk death for the Southern cause— but I still didn’t see how it was worth dying for.

“Besides,” Daddy continued, “President Davis had a showdown with Lincoln last November over his treatment of captured privateers. Davis threatened to execute a captured Federal officer for every privateer Lincoln executed. Lincoln finally backed down. Privateers are treated like any other prisoners of war now.”

“That’s a very small comfort, Daddy.”

“I know. But you can be proud that your father is about to become part of the Confederate Navy, Sugar. Did you read in the papers how we took on the Union fleet last week—and won?”

I had read about it, but Daddy was so excited about our victory at Hampton Roads that I let him retell the story of how the Confederate ironclad Virginia sank the Union’s most powerful warship, the Cumberland, then set the Congress on fire and drove the Minnesota aground. When the Union ironclad Monitor arrived the next day, the Virginia battled her for four and a half hours before the duel ended in a draw.

“Our sewing society has been making sandbags all week,” I said. “We’re sending them to General Magruder to fortify Yorktown against the Federal fleet.”

Daddy raised his fist and cheered. “Bravo! And bravo for Magruder. He has the Feds fooled into thinking he has a lot more men at Yorktown than he actually does. If the enemy fleet knew we only have about eight thousand men there, they would have sent landing parties and taken the city a long time ago.”

I thought about his words as Esther brought in a pecan pie for dessert—Daddy’s favorite. If the enemy knew how weak we were, maybe they could attack quickly and end the war before there was any more bloodshed. More than anything else, I wanted the war to end before the men I loved had to die.

“Now, this ain’t gonna taste near as good as usual, Massa Fletcher,” Esther warned as she set the pie in front of Daddy. “Seeing as I had to make it without real sugar. Ain’t no sugar anywhere in Richmond, just sorghum.”

“When I come back, Esther, I promise I’ll bring you a whole boatload of sugar.”

“You going away again, Massa Fletcher?”

“Yes, I can only stay for a couple of days.”

“Well, you make sure you bring yourself back safe, you hear? And don’t be worrying about bringing me no sugar.”

Daddy waited until Esther left the dining room again before turning to me, his expression serious. “The Federals are coming, Caroline, make no mistake about it. McClellan’s army is going to come after Richmond. The northern approach didn’t work for McDowell last summer, so they’re going to try moving up the Peninsula this time, between the James and York Rivers. Word has it that more than one hundred thousand soldiers are on their way to Fortress Monroe by ship—the largest army ever assembled on American shores.”

My stomach rolled over at the thought of such a huge army. “How many men do we have?”

“Not nearly that many. But Joe Johnston’s troops are going to be heading down to the Peninsula pretty soon to help Magruder.”

“That means . . . Charles and Jonathan?”

“Right. Our troops held their own against the Feds at Manassas last year, and they’ll do it again if they have to. You’ll be safe here in Richmond, I promise.” I would think about his promise many times in the months ahead.

Daddy stayed less than a week. The government moved swiftly to commission him as a privateer. Then, as abruptly as he had arrived, Daddy was gone.

On a mild spring day, the first Sunday in April, the Army of the Potomac passed through Richmond on their way to the Peninsula. We had been expecting them for days and preparing parcels of food for their arrival, but the news first reached us at noon, at the close of our church service.

“Trainloads of General Longstreet’s men have been arriving from Fredericksburg all morning,” a city official told us as we lingered on the portico outside St. Paul’s. “The poor souls have traveled nearly twenty-four hours without food. They’re half-starved.”

“Where are they now?” Mr. St. John asked. “Do you know if the Richmond Blues are among them? My son, Charles?”

“All I know is that they’re marching through town to Rocketts Wharf. They’re heading down to the Peninsula from there by steamboat.”

The calm of Sunday morning turned into chaos as people rushed around in all directions, searching for their loved ones, desperate to get parcels of food to them. I had come to church in my own buggy that morning, so I left the St. Johns to their own plans and hurried off to find Gilbert.

“Take me to Rocketts Wharf,” I told him. “Hurry! If Charles hasn’t arrived yet, we can wait for him down at the wharf.” I was afraid that I would be too late, that I’d already missed him.

Gilbert drove as if our lives depended on it, maneuvering the little buggy through back lanes and narrow alleys to avoid the worst of the traffic and the columns of men who were tramping through the streets. Bands played and women tossed spring flowers in greeting, and while it was reassuring to see so many thousands of soldiers, I couldn’t help remembering that a year had passed since we’d celebrated the first shots at Fort Sumter. The war, which many thought would be over in thirty days, had dragged on for a year with still no end in sight.

The wharf was a sea of milling, gray-clad men. If Charles was among them, I didn’t know how I would ever find him. I only knew that I had to try. I climbed down from the buggy without waiting for Gilbert to help me.

“Drive home and fetch the food I packed,” I told him. “And bring Tessie back with you so she has a chance to see Josiah.”

Gilbert surveyed the vast host of soldiers and shook his head. “Ain’t right to leave you here all alone, Missy. All these men . . .”

“I’ll be fine. Just hurry, Gilbert.”

I started running toward the dock before he could stop me, pushing through the swarming men, scanning their faces, calling Charles’ name, asking for his company. Then above the rumble of voices I heard him calling.

“Caroline! Caroline, over here!” I caught a brief glimpse of Josiah and of Jonathan waving to me. Then I spotted Charles plowing a path through the crowd as he hurried toward me. I’m not sure I would have recognized him if he hadn’t been calling my name.

His body looked leaner and more muscular than I remembered, his dark hair overgrown and badly in need of a barber. His beard, always so neatly trimmed, was long and scruffy. But his beautiful eyes were the same, his face as handsome as I’d remembered, even with windburned cheeks and a new network of lines etching the corners of his eyes.

We both halted when we were a few feet apart and drank in the sight of each other from head to toe. The gray uniform coat he’d had tailor-made a year ago was wrinkled and worn at the cuffs. A rip in his right sleeve had been crudely patched. His trousers were baggy-kneed, the hems caked with dried mud. The soles of his scuffed boots testified to miles of hard marching.

Charles gazed back at me, his eyes as soft as blue flannel. “You’re even more beautiful than your picture,” he said. “Your letters keep me going, Caroline. I read them over and over.” He slid his knapsack with his blanket roll off his shoulders as he talked and leaned his rifle against it. Water sloshed in his canteen as he lifted the strap over his head to remove it. Then he opened his arms to me.

“Let me hold you, Caroline.” The gray wool of his jacket felt rough against my cheek. It smelled of woodsmoke and gunpowder and sweat. “I want to memorize what it feels like to have you in my arms,” he murmured, “and the scent of your hair, your skin.”

We might have been the only two people on the wharf as Charles held my face in his hands and kissed my forehead, my temples, my neck. I felt the strength in his arms as he held me tightly to himself, the warm pressure of his body against mine. Neither of us wanted to let go. I listened to his heartbeat and the sound of his breathing, remembering the delicate thread of life that held both of us to this earth. I had watched that thread break so many times now—watched helplessly as a heart ceased to beat or a last breath was drawn—and I willed life to fill Charles, to remain in him.

“When I left home,” he said, “I didn’t think it was possible to love you any more than I already did . . . but I do.”

“I love you so much!” I told him, but I don’t know if he heard me as the blast of a steam whistle drowned out my words.

“That’s my ship,” he said.

“Charles, don’t go!”

He clutched me tighter still. “Listen now. God willing, I’ll be back to hold you again soon.” He bent down, and his lips briefly kissed mine. It was all we dared do in such a public place. I sensed his reluctance as he finally released me from his arms.

“Where are they sending you?” I asked as he retrieved his gun and slung his knapsack over his shoulder.

“Yorktown.”

My stomach rolled like a wave at his words. “One hundred thousand enemy soldiers.”

“Don’t go . . .” I whispered.

As the call came to begin boarding the ship, Sally and her carriage driver arrived with food. She filled Charles’ arms with sacks and parcels, so he wasn’t able to hold me or squeeze my hand a final time. I reached out once more to touch his cheek, his hair. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, Caroline.” He walked backward as far as he could, unwilling to lose sight of me, then ran up the ramp and dropped his packages so he could crowd near the ship’s rail and wave.

The soldiers gave the Rebel yell as the boat steamed from the dock, and the sound of it—bold and defiant—shivered through me. I waved until my arms ached and Charles’ boat finally disappeared from sight. Then, as I turned away to wipe my tears, I saw Tessie hurrying toward the dock, searching for Josiah. Too late.

Charles remained in besieged Yorktown, sixty miles away, for nearly a month while McClellan’s massive army assembled nearby. When the report came that the Federals were moving their heavy guns into place to fire on Yorktown, I spent every spare moment in prayer for Charles’ safety.

Such dreadful news filled the newspapers throughout the month of April that Tessie begged me not to read it anymore. “It just making you upset, honey,” she insisted. “Where’s the good in knowing what’s happening in all them places if you can’t change anything? I wish I never learn to read about such terrible things.”

We read about the battle in Shiloh, Tennessee, and the incomprehensible loss of eleven thousand soldiers. Four days later, Fort Pulaski surrendered, leaving the Savannah harbor undefended. A week later, Fort Macon in Beaufort, North Carolina, was lost. Then, at the end of the month, came the staggering loss of New Orleans and the lower Mississippi River.

“I want this awful war to end, Tessie.” Dear God, when will it end?

I had little time to worry about those faraway places as the enemy pressed closer and closer to Richmond. While McClellan’s army prepared to move up the Peninsula, two other Union forces inched closer to Richmond, one moving south along the Rappahannock River, the other approaching in the Shenandoah Valley. During the first week of May, rumors spread throughout the city that our troops had evacuated Yorktown and had moved to defend the entrenchments around Richmond. I didn’t learn about the fierce fighting that had taken place in Williamsburg, or the danger Charles had been in, until I received his letter a few days after the battle.

We knew the Federal guns were in place, ready to bombard Yorktown, and that it was useless to stay and defend the city any longer.On the night we evacuated, our batteries rained fire on the enemy throughout the night to cover our retreat. My company was part of the rear guard and among the last to leave. The next day when the Federals discovered that we were gone, they pursued us, catching up with us at Williamsburg and attacking my division.

We battled them from sunrise until sundown—outnumbered and outgunned—but we drove them back. When the enemy finally withdrew, we waited until dark, then marched all night toward Richmond.I have never been so weary in all my life, nor have I ever fought so hard and marched so long without food. You can see by my shaky handwriting that I am still weak with exhaustion. But the thought of what we are fighting for keeps me going—the knowledge of the freedoms we stand to lose . . .

Charles’ letters were precious to me, but this time his words made me so angry that I crumpled up his letter and threw it across the bedroom. Then I pulled out a sheet of stationery and composed an angry letter to him in return.

I told him how furious I was with him for risking his life for such a hopeless cause. The South was wrong, the “freedom” he was fighting for—the “freedom” to hold people as slaves—was a moral outrage. Couldn’t he see the terrible devastation he was bringing upon our land, the tragic waste of life? I told him to read his Bible, the book of Exodus, and see how Pharaoh had hardened his heart against freeing his slaves until even his own officials begged him to let them go, saying, “Do you not yet realize that Egypt is ruined?” The South was slowly being ruined, and I was so afraid that Charles would die, just as all of Egypt’s firstborn sons had died. I didn’t want to go on living without Charles.

In the end, I carefully straightened all the wrinkles out of Charles’ letter and threw my own letter into the fire instead.

A week after Yorktown, the Confederates evacuated our naval base at Norfolk, withdrawing more of our forces up the Peninsula to defend Richmond. When I read that the Rebels had destroyed their most powerful warship, the ironclad Virginia, rather than see her fall into enemy hands, I thought of how devastated my father would be by this news. The Virginia couldn’t navigate the shallow waters of the James River, nor could it get past the Union blockade into the open sea, so the decision had been made to destroy her.

Now Richmond faced a new threat. I learned of it when Mr. St. John drove up Church Hill late one afternoon to warn me.

“Caroline, you must pack your things and get ready to leave the city,” he said. Gilbert had shown him into Daddy’s library, but Mr. St. John was too agitated to sit down, too distraught to accept even a glass of brandy or one of Daddy’s last few cigars.

“I’m sending Sally and my wife to safety outside Richmond tomorrow,” he said. “You must get packed and go with them, Caroline.”

“Leave the city . . . why?” I backed into the chair Gilbert had offered Mr. St. John as my knees suddenly went weak. “What’s going on?”

“The evacuation of Norfolk means that the mouth of the James River is now wide open to the enemy’s fleet. There is the very real possibility that Federal gunboats are going to sail up the river to bombard Richmond into surrendering. We’ve planted torpedoes and obstructions in the channel, but our last river defense at Drewry’s Bluff is only half-finished. No one knows if her guns can stop the ironclad Monitor. And the Monitor will likely come with an escort of gunboats. You must evacuate.”

I couldn’t grasp what he was saying. Thousands of displaced persons had crowded into Richmond from the surrounding countryside, seeking refuge. I had always pitied these homeless souls, alone in a strange city. Was I now to become one of them, looking for shelter in an alien city?

“But . . . where would I go? This is my home . . . I have no place to go.”

“President Davis already sent his family south to Raleigh, North Carolina, by train. I managed to purchase three of the very last tickets on a train that’s headed there tomorrow morning.”

“What about all of our servants?”

He shook his head. He was going to leave them all here to die.

“I can’t run away and leave Tessie and Eli.”

“They will be fine, Caroline. The Union army won’t hurt them. But there’s no telling what the Yankees will do to you and the other women if you stay. Besides, if the warships do get through, the state legislature plans to reduce this city to ashes rather than let it fall into enemy hands. Congress has adjourned, and most of its members are fleeing. Don’t you see? You must evacuate. Charles would never forgive me if I let anything happen to you.”

I felt too numb with fear to argue with him. I agreed to meet Sally and Mrs. St. John at the depot early tomorrow morning. Then I ran upstairs to ask Tessie to help me pack.

“You doing the right thing,” she assured me as she calmly filled a trunk with all the belongings I would need. On my own, I wouldn’t have known what to bring and what to leave behind. I couldn’t think past my panic. “Them St. Johns will take good care you—almost as good as I would,” she soothed. “Most important thing, you be safe.”

“What about you and Eli and the others? If it isn’t safe for me to stay here, how in the world can I leave all of you? They plan to burn the city down—if the Federals don’t blast it to smithereens first.”

Tessie paused to look up at me, and her beautiful face showed no trace of fear or worry. “We be safe, baby. Don’t you know Eli will be praying up a storm? Massa Jesus gonna take care us.”

“I just wish there was someplace safe where you could go, too.”

She took my hands in hers and gave them a gentle squeeze. “Honey, I wouldn’t leave here if you had a hundred train tickets. Someday, after the Yankees win, my boy, Grady, gonna come home looking for me, and I plan on being here when he do.”

It was the first time Tessie had mentioned Grady since they’d taken him away nine years ago, the first hint she’d ever given of the hope she’d nurtured all those years. I fell into her arms, grieving for her, with her.

“Oh, Tessie, if there was anything I could do to bring Grady home again, I would gladly do it. When this war is over, I promise I’ll move heaven and earth to find him for you.”

We held each other for a few more moments. Then, as if sorry she had allowed me to glimpse her hope, Tessie freed herself from my arms and resolutely resumed her packing. “I want you to go see Ruby, now,” she said. “Ask her which of your mama’s necklaces and things was special to her, so you can take them with you for keepsakes.”

I wrote a long letter to Charles by candlelight, then spent a sleepless night waiting for dawn. It was very early when Gilbert loaded my trunk onto the buggy and drove me to the depot, but even at that early hour, traffic jammed the roads. Columns of soldiers marched about while people fled Richmond in droves, scattering in all directions and by every conceivable means of transportation. Wagons and carts and even wheelbarrows were headed south across the James River bridge; flatboats floated west up the Kanawha Canal, all heaped with boxes, trunks, satchels, and all kinds of household goods. In downtown Richmond, businesses were closed and boarded, houses deserted. As we passed Capitol Square, we saw workers removing boxloads of documents from the government buildings. The fear etched on every face seemed contagious, the panic barely contained.

The scene at the depot was one of complete chaos, with people dashing to and fro, shouting and clamoring for tickets that couldn’t be purchased at any price. As I watched from the buggy seat, a feeling of great calm suddenly filled me. Why was I running away? I had been praying for God’s help and strength every day since the war began—why would He desert me now? Couldn’t He protect me here, as He would protect Eli and the others, just as easily as someplace else?

When Gilbert started to climb down from the buggy, I stopped him. “Leave my trunk, for now,” I told him. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

The train was already at the station, taking on coal, working up steam. Passengers hovered close, waiting for the signal to board, even though the train wasn’t scheduled to leave for another ten minutes. I found Sally and her parents on the platform, watching anxiously for me.

“Caroline, finally,” Sally said, exhaling. “We were so afraid your carriage would get stuck in that awful traffic and you’d miss the train.”

“Where’s your trunk?” Mr. St. John asked. “Did your boy check your baggage already?”

“Please don’t be angry with me,” I said, “but I’m not going with you.”

“Now, see here,” Mr. St. John said, “I feel responsible for you, seeing as your father is away. I really must insist that you go. This may be your only chance to reach safety.”

I shook my head. “I’m not afraid to stay here. This is my home. I would be much more afraid to be a refugee without a home, far away from my loved ones.”

All around us, the volume of agitated voices suddenly swelled to a roar as the bell on the locomotive began to ring. The conductor pushed through the crowd, calling ticketed passengers to board. As people began mobbing the train cars, Sally and her mother looked desperately from the train, to me, to the train again.

“Come with us, Caroline. Please,” Sally begged.

“I can’t,” I told her, shaking my head. “Good-bye. . . .” I turned and hurried away, knowing how eager the women were to leave Richmond, knowing that Mr. St. John was too lame to run after me.

Gilbert was pacing nervously beside the buggy when I returned. “You wanting this trunk now, Missy? Seems like that train’s about to leave.”

“It is, but I won’t be on it. I’m staying here.”

“Oh, Missy Caroline . . . I don’t think—”

“Take me home, Gilbert.” I mustered my bravest smile and added, “That’s an order.”

Even though I knew I had made the right decision, the suspense of waiting for the Union gunboats to arrive, waiting for the shelling to begin, was terrible. I kept my own trunk packed and made all the servants pack their things, too, so that if the city did burn to the ground we would all have a few essentials. Then we gathered in the parlor to wait.

“You thinking we might go out to Hilltop if things get bad?” Tessie asked.

“No, Hilltop won’t be any safer than Richmond—in fact, it might be worse. Enemy troops are heading right up the Peninsula in that direction. And that’s where all our men are dug in, waiting for them.”

I played the piano for everyone while we waited. Tessie and I took turns reading the Bible aloud. We knitted. Luella and Ruby did some mending. Eli prayed.

Not long after we had all eaten a little lunch, we heard the unmistakable sound of cannon booming in the distance. Unlike the night of the Pawnee scare, the cannonfire didn’t stop this time. Instead, the volley of explosions built and intensified, rattling the windowpanes and echoing off Richmond’s many hills. Drewry’s Bluff, the last fortress guarding the city, was a scant seven miles south of where we sat on Church Hill.

The battle raged for more than three and a half hours. I felt each blast in the pit of my stomach. But while we could tell from the thunderous sound that the fighting was very fierce, the shelling didn’t seem to be drawing any closer to the city. We continued to pray.

As evening fell, the sound of artillery fire slowed, then finally stopped. We all looked at each other. The silence was as heavy as the cannonading had been.

Esther stood. “Enough of this nonsense. Kitchen fire’s gonna go out if I don’t tend to it.”

As she strode away, chin held high, Eli began to laugh. “Seems like fear is a more powerful enemy than the Yankees.”

We learned the next day that the Union fleet had not been able to get past the eight Confederate guns at Drewry’s Bluff. For now, Richmond was safe. But more important, my own faith had won a victory over my fear.

Throughout the month of May, General McClellan’s massive army made its ponderous way up the Peninsula through torrential rain and oozing mud. We all knew that the two armies were about to clash, and city officials were determined to be better prepared to handle the thousands of casualties this time. Our latest sewing project was to stitch yards and yards of ticking material into mattress covers for the three-thousand-bed Chimborazo Hospital, on the hill just east of my home. That’s what Tessie, Ruby, and I were doing one afternoon when we heard a carriage arrive at our door.

“Sounds like we got company,” Tessie said. She started to rise, but I quickly stood instead.

“No, let me go.”

I lived in dread of the day that a messenger would arrive with news of my father, or of Charles or Jonathan, but delaying the news would never change it. I laid down my sewing and hurried to the door behind Gilbert. It wasn’t a carriage that was drawing to a stop out front, but a battered farm wagon, its wheels caked with mud. It took me a moment to recognize the tired, bedraggled-looking people climbing down from it. They were my grandmother, my aunt Anne, and my young cousin Thomas from Hilltop.

Their driver and the two Negro maidservants accompanying them were coated with mud clear to their waists from pushing the mired wagon out of ruts. I opened the front door wide and welcomed my family inside as Gilbert led the horses, the wagon, and the dripping servants around to the back door.

“Where’s George?” my grandmother demanded to know before I could utter a word of greeting.

“He . . . he’s not home, Grandmother. My father’s ships sailed last March, and we—”

“Where’s George?” she repeated. “Did any of these useless servants tell George I’m here?”

“George isn’t home, Mother Fletcher,” Aunt Anne shouted. I remembered then that my grandmother had been nearly deaf when I’d met her eight years ago. Judging by the way she peered all around with her eyes squinted and her head thrust forward, her eyesight was probably failing, too.

“What? This isn’t George’s home?” Grandmother said. “Where are we, Anne? You said we were going to George’s home.”

“This is George’s home, but George isn’t home,” Aunt Anne shouted.

“Stop repeating everything! Is this George’s home or isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Aunt Anne and I both shouted together.

“Then why doesn’t somebody tell George I’m here?”

Aunt Anne looked at me helplessly.

“George is at work,” I shouted in a moment of inspiration.

“Of course . . . at work.” Grandmother reached for my arm and let me help her to a chair in the parlor. She was alarmingly thin and frail, her skin as fragile as tissue paper. “Make me a pot of tea, Ellie,” she told Ruby, who was watching all of this, wideeyed.

“Yes, ma’am,” Ruby replied and scurried out to the kitchen. But where she was going to get tea was a mystery to me. We’d had nothing but steeped blackberry leaves to drink for months.

“You’re looking very well, Mary,” Grandmother said. It took me a startled moment to realize that she was talking to me—and that she had mistaken me for my mother.

“Um . . . Mary was my mother. I’m her daughter, Caroline.”

“Where is Caroline? At school, I suppose?”

“No, I’m Caroline,” I shouted.

“I haven’t seen that child in ages,” Grandmother said as she leaned back in her chair. “You’d think George would bring his only child out to Hilltop once in a while to see me, wouldn’t you? Where is George?”

I looked to Aunt Anne for help, but she simply shrugged and said in a hushed voice, “Caroline, please forgive us, dear, for arriving unannounced, but we had no one to send ahead of us. The Negroes would have all bolted over to the enemy, thinking they’d be free, if we had let them out of our sight.”

“I don’t mind at all. And I’m sorry for not welcoming you properly. Please, would you like something to eat, or maybe a place to rest or freshen up?”

“I’m not hungry, but perhaps Mother Fletcher would . . .”We both turned to ask Grandmother, but her eyes were closed and her head had lolled to the side, resting against the wings of the chair. She was snoring.

Aunt Anne and Cousin Thomas ate the light lunch Esther had quickly prepared, while Tessie and Luella readied the upstairs bedrooms for our guests. Gilbert hauled their luggage up to their rooms. We decided that Grandmother and her maid would sleep in Daddy’s library, since climbing the stairs was difficult for her.

“Hilltop is on the far side of the Chickahominy,” Aunt Anne explained as she ate, “and since the Confederate lines are on this side of the river, William thought it wise to send us to safety. The Federals are advancing, and the plantation will soon be in enemy hands.”

“They’re that close?” I asked, my stomach doing a slow, queasy turn.

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“I wanted to stay home and shoot Yankees,” young Thomas said, “but Father wouldn’t let me.” They were the first words he had spoken since he’d arrived. I calculated his age to be fourteen, nearly the age Jonathan had been the first time we’d met. But Thomas had none of his older brother’s curiosity and wiry vitality. Instead, Thomas was plump and lethargic and seemed content to sit and stare out the window all day. If he had stayed at Hilltop to shoot Yankees, I don’t know how he would have summoned the energy to reload the shotgun.

“William insisted on staying at the plantation,” Anne continued. “Heaven only knows what the Yankees will do with him. He’s the only one left, except for the slaves, but he didn’t want to abandon our home.”

“You are all very welcome here, Aunt Anne. Stay as long as you’d like.”

“We don’t want to be a burden to you. Your servants will find some produce in the wagon and the last of our hams. We’d rather you got them than the Yankees.”

“You have no idea what a blessing it will be to have real food again. Eli dug up his flower garden and planted vegetables this spring, but all we’ve harvested so far are some greens. Your food is a godsend.”

She smiled ruefully. “You may change your mind about what a godsend we are after you’ve lived with Mother Fletcher for a few days. But you know, out of all of us, I feel the most sorry for her. The war has changed everyone’s life—probably forever—but we’re still young enough to adjust, to start all over again if we have to. I pray to God that the war doesn’t take my husband or my sons, but at least the decision to engage in this folly was theirs to make. Mother Fletcher didn’t choose any of this. And now the quiet life she always had with her family, living on her own land, is gone— and no one can help her understand why.”

A few days later, early in the afternoon, a great rumble, like the roll of thunder, suddenly shook the house. Deaf as she was, Grandmother awoke from her catnap and said, “You’d better tell the servants to close the windows, Anne. It’s thundering.”

The skies were gray and overcast, but there weren’t any thunderclouds. Aunt Anne and I looked at each other as the rumbling booms grew louder. “It’s artillery,” I told her.

“Is it the war?” Thomas asked, looking up from the house of cards he was constructing. His mother nodded. “Tarnation! I want to fight, too, Ma, like Will and Jonathan. I’ll bet it’s grand.”

I knew better. The only thing grand was the scale of the slaughter. Every boom of the cannon meant men’s bodies were being blasted into pieces in a hail of canister shot and shrapnel.

We walked outside into the still, humid afternoon and listened. The fighting was the closest I’d ever heard it, just east of us. We felt the ground quaking. In the quiet moments between cannon blasts, we could hear the hollow clatter of gunfire, like bones rattling.

The horrific thundering finally stopped that evening, then resumed the next morning. By the time the battle ended the following afternoon, a long line of ambulances and farm wagons was already rolling into the city carrying the wounded and the dying.

“I’m going to Chimborazo Hospital to help,” I told Aunt Anne after lunch. She stared at me in surprise.

“You always did have a tender heart, Caroline. I remember how you nursed those little colored babies through the measles. But frankly, it surprises me that you’re able to go to such a dreadful place and see . . . that sort of thing.”

I forced myself to say what I had been thinking since the artillery fire began. “Charles and Jonathan are fighting out there somewhere. These soldiers might be from their company. If I don’t go and help them, who will?”

“I’d like to join you,” she said simply.

Chimborazo resembled a scene from Dante’s Inferno. I lost what little lunch I had eaten after I glimpsed a dying soldier whose entire lower jaw had been blown away. But from the men who were less seriously wounded, whose faces I cooled with water and whose thirst I helped ease, I learned that yesterday’s battle had been fought at Seven Pines, a few miles east of the city. Charles, along with the First Virginia Infantry, had taken part in a Confederate assault that attempted to push back the Union forces. The engagement had been successful the first day, then ended in a bloody draw the second. Among the wounded was the Rebel commander General Joe Johnston.

Before returning home, Aunt Anne and I drove downtown together, holding our breath and each other’s hands as we scanned a list of the four thousand men who had been killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. We sagged against each other in relief when we saw that Jonathan and Charles were not on it.

“You’ve changed, Caroline,” Aunt Anne said as we drove back up Church Hill afterward. “You’ve become a very strong young woman.”

I shook my head, my tears of relief still falling onto my lap. “No. I’m not strong at all. The fact that this war is so close terrifies me. Reading those lists and waiting to hear news of my loved ones is an agonizing ordeal. I’m not strong at all, Aunt Anne . . . but I’m learning to lean on a God who is.”